


The Devil You Know

by Safiyabat



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen, Mentions of Ezekiel
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-09
Updated: 2013-11-09
Packaged: 2017-12-31 23:49:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,927
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1037841
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Safiyabat/pseuds/Safiyabat
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Tracy Bell learns something while recuperating from an injury.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Devil You Know

**Author's Note:**

> I finally managed to answer my own prompt. The whole purpose of this work was to make myself feel better about the direction Sam seems to be going in this season. Warning: brief mention of self harm, possible suicidal tendencies.
> 
> Supernatural and the characters from the show are not my property. I make no money from this or any other work of fan fiction.

Tracy kept a brave face on it when the ghouls overpowered her. She didn’t make a sound when they held her down or when they tied her to the damn table and she kept absolutely silent as they babbled their way through the usual macho ghoul posturing. If she hadn’t been about to die, devoured by graveyard creeps, she’d have made a mental note to look further into that. Was it a biological imperative that ghouls give a patented Classic Evil Villain speech before they died? It would be up to some other hunter to investigate the finer points of ghoul instinct and behavioral psychology, though, because Tracy Bell was going to die.

She was able to keep a brave face on it through everything up until the first bite came. Then she bit down on her lip. The second bite came and she bit hard enough to draw blood. It wasn’t so much terror that caused her to scream – although yeah, being eaten alive did carry a certain degree of terror if you thought about it that way – it was the pain. Their teeth weren’t exceptionally sharp but their jaws were strong and there were three of them. From the sound of it – heavy boots on the floor as the front door opened – at least one more was coming. When the third bite came through she couldn’t help but give full voice to the agony, her wail echoing off the bare walls.  


An explosion rang out, drowning out the Doppler effect of her shriek. White-hot gasses passed right over her exposed belly as the head of the ghoul biting into her abdomen vaporized. She lifted her head even as her other two assailants turned to look.  


Sam Winchester – the idiot who had started the Apocalypse – stood in the doorway. He looked, if possible, even less healthy than he had the last time she’d seen him but he held his gun steady and his face was calm and resolute. He turned his gun to the ghoul on her left and decapitated it with three shots. The third ghoul had time to react, moving toward the fool with a speed that belied its size. That didn’t stop Sam from shooting it twice, putting it down. “Nice job with the first four,” he said, lowering his gun and pulling out a knife. “Is that all of them?”  


“Yeah,” she gasped. He cut her arms free, leaving a few inches of rope attached to her wrists when he did. “What the hell?” she asked before he turned and handed her the knife.  


“Do you need help sitting up?” he asked in a neutral tone, looking at the wall. “That gut bite is bleeding pretty badly.”  


She forced herself into a sitting position. “I’m good,” she said. It wasn’t fun, but it was better than having the tainted man’s hands on her. “Where’s your brother?”  


“I don’t know. I’m pretty sure he gave you his number. Garth could probably track him down if you need him; you must know Garth.” He stacked the corpses in a corner. “You got anything in here you want to take out with you?” He didn’t waste time; the corpses were already being soaked in some kind of accelerant as he spoke.  


She used his knife to cut through the ropes on her legs. “What do you mean you don’t know?”  


He glanced over at her. “Do you have another shirt somewhere?” Hazel eyes returned to his work.  


She glanced down. The one she’d been wearing had been pretty well shredded. “Uh, yeah. In my car. So why don’t you know where Dean is?”  


“We split up. Look, you should get that bandaged and washed out and everything. Ghoul bites are nasty – they get infected pretty easily.”  


“What would you know about it, demon boy?” she snarled.  


He huffed a little, still not looking directly at her. “Well, for starters I got tied down and eaten by ghouls.” Her disbelief must have shown on her face – if he was so incompetent that he let freaking Lucifer out of his cage he must not have done much hunting – because he spoke again. His voice had a certain hoarseness to it, like he’d been coughing or something. Maybe he just wasn’t used to speaking so much. “It was a long time ago. Not long before – well, that. They, uh, bled me out almost halfway, maybe more, and they, uh, started chowing down. Poked right into my side, too. I’ve still got the scar. Mine didn’t get cleared up on the return trip it turns out.”  


“But your brother got you patched up.”  


“He threw some old tee shirts on there. I did my own stitches. We, uh, we weren’t getting along too well by then. Not the point. The point is that you need to get your injuries dealt with. If you want I can drive you to a hospital for stitches or whatever.” He glanced back over. “Your knee is swollen. How badly are you hurt?”  


She opened her mouth, closed it again. “I don’t think it’ll hold my weight.”  


He turned and left the room. She heard the sound of wood splintering and he returned with one of the banister supports. “It looked to be about the right height,” he said, staying as far away as he possibly could and still pass the makeshift cane to her. “Come on. You got a phone?”  


She shook her head. “Ghouls again.”  


He folded his lips and then huffed again. She supposed it was a sort of laugh. “Guess I’m not really one to be casting stones about hunting alone, huh? All right. You need help. Can you stand being near me long enough for me to drive you to the hospital?”  


She wanted to say no. Every time she looked at that leonine face she saw the faces of her mother, her brothers as that demon sliced through them. The last thing she wanted was to be in the passenger seat of her Beetle with him behind the wheel, having to breathe the same air as this scumbag. If only half of the stuff she’d heard about him was true he was fair game himself, more prey than hunter. It was only the presence of his big brother Dean that had kept the other hunters at bay, and if he’d abandoned the idiot then it was only a matter of time. At the same time, there was no possible other way to get her out of here. “All right,” she sighed, handing him the keys. “Go ahead and take down the house, I’ll meet you out there.”  


He nodded, didn’t bother smiling or giving any kind of fake-friendly crap like that. He knew the score. Everyone said he was smart. He just set about getting the place ready to go up like it was something he’d been planning to do all along, and maybe he had. Ten minutes later she’d gotten another shirt on and wadded up the shreds of the last one into the worst of her wounds and the flames were already licking out of the windows. He started the car without any words and pulled out of the driveway at a good clip. “Dude – what’s the rush?” she demanded, glaring. “Are you trying to wreck the tires?”  


“Trying to establish the minimum safe distance,” he replied. “Broke a gas line before I left.”  


“You’re psychotic,” she said, edging closer to the door. Everything hurt.  


“We’re pretty far removed from human habitation,” he replied. “No one is even going to notice the explosion, never mind be hurt by it. I wanted every trace of those ghouls gone. People are going to be freaked out enough with the angels and the demons. They don’t need to factor the bottom feeders in too.”  


“Wouldn’t have figured you’d care.” His fingers tightened around the steering wheel but he didn’t respond. “So how come your brother finally kicked you to the curb?”  


“We had some fundamental philosophical differences. It’s not something you need to worry about, Tracy. Let’s just get you to a hospital and we can worry about calling someone in to help you afterward, okay?” He glanced at her. “So. Seven ghouls solo.”  


She shrugged. “I didn’t know there would be seven. Garth thought there would only be one or two.”  


“Garth sent you in?” He snorted.  


“Garth’s a good dispatcher. What the hell were you doing here?”  


“I saw signs of ghoul activity. It looked like there might be more of them than we’d normally see so I figured I’d check it out.”  


“What, no one sent you?”  


“I’ve had my fill of orders, thanks.”  


“Is that what you said when you let Lucifer out of his cage?” He didn’t say anything. “Just stay away from hunting, Winchester. No one wants you around.”  


“I’ve noticed,” he said drily, and remained silent for the rest of the drive.  


The nearest hospital was in Ellenburg, a good half hour away. Winchester kept his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel. He looked a little ridiculous scrunched up in her seat. It had to be uncomfortable for him but he didn’t say anything. Who cared anyway? How many people had suffered because of him? How many had died? Still, there was something about the set of his eyes – shadowed, sunken – that suggested pain. Oh no, she told herself. There was no way that she was going to let herself feel the slightest sympathy for Sam Freaking Winchester.  


The story they gave the ER staff was that they’d been working on a farm tearing down some old building when a wild animal had attacked her. They hadn’t seen what kind. All in all she needed a lot of stitches and wound care, a round of preventative antibiotics and emergency orthoscopic surgery on her knee. They were able to get her in right away and were even willing to send her “home” with her “colleague,” since he seemed like such a nice, upstanding and responsible young man. They let Winchester come in and see her after the surgery.  


“They asked if I’d be willing to take you home,” he told her.  


“I know. They said the same thing to me.”  


“I’ll take you to a hotel, you can call whoever you want from there. Dean, if you want. Garth. I’ll hang out until he can get there and bring you wherever, not a minute more. I’ll bring you food, make sure you don’t fall and that’s it.”  


“Why would you do that?” she asked him bluntly. “I hate you more than I hate any human alive.”  


He huffed again. “What other option do you have?”  


She sighed. It was true. “Fine,” she spat. “But don’t even think of trying anything.”  


“Excuse me? I’m not good enough for the man who started the Apocalypse?”  


His eyebrows drew together. “You hate me more than any human alive, remember? Here. While you were in surgery I ran out and picked you up some sweats. They should fit over your leg brace. I’ll let the nurses help you with them.” He sneered a little on the word human – maybe the rumors were true after all. Well, after she got back on her feet she could start hunting him. If Dean had kicked him to the curb maybe he’d help. Watching him while they were cooped up together would give her the opportunity to observe him, figure out what made him tick. How to take him down. Someone should have done it a long time ago.  


Nurses helped her to dress and explained to both her and to Winchester what the medications and dosages were. She let him wheel her out to the car and gave him directions to her motel, where he handed her his cell phone. “Who do you want to call?”  


She considered. “Dean,” she decided.  


“Speed dial one,” he told her and stepped away. Otherwise he didn’t react.  


The elder Winchester picked up right away. “Sammy? Sammy? Oh thank God – or whoever. Are you okay? Tell me where the hell you are.” He sounded absolutely wrecked, like he’d been… crying?  


“This isn’t Sam,” she told him quickly, glancing at her loathsome companion. “This is Tracy Bell. My phone got… well, it’s not usable and he lent me his.”  


“Oh.” There was a moment of silence. “Is he okay?”  


“He looks… I mean, he’s alive and I don’t think he’s hurt. Um, I’ve been hurt. I need to stay off my leg for a while. Your brother is willing to stay with me until someone can come and get me but, um, I didn’t know who else to call.” She glanced at the massive male – subhuman, she reminded herself.  


“Well, we do owe you for your help with Abaddon that one time. Sammy’s not willing to stay?”  


“I won’t have him longer than I have to. Not after all he’s done.”  


He sighed. “Yeah. Okay. Fair enough. Where are you?”  


“Ellenburg Special Motor Inn, Ellenburg, Washington. Room 143.”  


Dean thought about it. “Okay. It should take us about two days to get there. Can you put up with him that long?”  


“I’ll try.”  


“Is he there now?”  


“Yeah. Why, do you want to speak to him?” Sam shook his head, violently. “He’s shaking his head.”  


“Well too bad, put him on the phone please.”  


“He really wants to talk to you, Winchester.” She shook the phone at him.  


He took the phone. Then he put it on the ground – still on – and carefully wrapped it in his outer flannel shirt. After that, he took what looked like a heavy pistol out of his bag and brought the butt down on the phone, over and over, until he could hear that there was nothing left of the device. Then he calmly got up, retrieved the SIM card and brushed the remaining parts into the garbage can. “You hungry?” he asked her. “There’s a diner nearby. I can get you whatever.”  


She gaped. “You could have just hung up the phone.”  


“Yeah, well, what do you expect from the guy who let Luci out of the box, right? Do you want anything from the diner or not?” He carefully placed the sim card into some kind of container in one of his bags and turned to face her.  


“Uh, yeah. Some kind of chicken sandwich, I guess. Thanks.” He nodded once and disappeared. She leaned back against the pillows, not really sure of what she’d just witnessed.  


The phone on the bedside table rang. She answered it. “Turned off his phone, didn’t he?” Dean asked.  


“Uh, yeah. Reports on him didn’t have him pinned as a giant hulking rage monster. I don’t think you’ll be getting through to that phone ever again.”  


“Did he shoot it?”  


“Pistol-whipped it.”  


“Eh. Guess he’s calming down some. Or maybe he didn’t want to bring the authorities in.”  


“Jesus Christ! What the hell is going on with the two of you?”  


“Nothing you need to worry about. He’s going to take perfectly good care of you. Where is he now?”  


“Uh, getting food, why? Is there another Apocalypse coming? Is he about to unleash another demon army?”  


“Nah, they like him, it’s me they seem to want to off these days. I think they feel sorry for him or something. You’re probably safer with him than with anyone else in the world right now. You probably won’t believe that but it’s true.” He sighed. “Look, he’s… he’s kind of delicate right now, okay? Go easy on him, would you?”  


“We’ve agreed to stay out of each other’s way. It’s about as much as either of us can really hope for right now.” She glared at his bags.  


“What were the two of you doing together anyway that you got hurt?”  


“We weren’t together. I was hunting some ghouls for Garth and he caught the same case independently.” She sniffed. “Amateurs. Anyway, the ghouls took me down and he burst in.”  


“But he’s the amateur?”  


“I took out four!”  


“He still saved your ass. Remember that. He could’ve ditched your ass at the hospital too but he didn’t. Hey Cas – how are you with driving?” He was speaking to someone Tracy couldn’t hear. “Well, you’ll get more experience. Look it shouldn’t take more than twenty-two hours if Cas and I are both driving, okay? Don’t tell him that. I don’t want him to pull another disappearing act. I need to bring him home, okay?”  


“Wait – you didn’t kick him out?”  


“Uh, no. No, I screwed up and he left. I’ll let him tell the story if he wants to, but I did something I knew he wouldn’t want and… anyway. It doesn’t matter. I just want him to come home, okay? I just need my little brother back.”  


The key turned in the lock. “Gotta go,” she said. “He’s back.”  


“Bye.” He hung up.  


“You don’t have to hide the fact you’re talking to Dean,” he told her, closing the door and locking it behind him. “The guy’s not an idiot. It’s not like he couldn’t figure out how to call the room phone.” He approached, again staying as physically far from her as he could while still delivering the food. “Grilled chicken with pesto, extra fries.”  


“How did you know I liked fries?” she couldn’t help but grin.  


He started. “I guess you reminded me a little bit of someone. She was a big fan of fries.” He looked off into the wall again, one corner of his mouth rising. It was almost a smile. “She’d kill for fries, really.” He sat down at the desk with a plain garden salad.  


“That’s seriously all you’re going to eat?”  


“Yeah.”  


“You look like you haven’t eaten in days.”  


“So?” He took a fork full of lettuce.  


“So if you’re going to be hunting you need to be at full strength, dumb-ass. Going in half starved or worse is going to get you killed.”  


He shrugged. “That’s kind of my problem, isn’t it? Not yours.”  


“It’s my problem if you’re backing me up.”  


“That wasn’t on my to-do list. If I’d known you were there I’d have stayed away, Tracy. I mean, I’m glad ghouls didn’t eat you after all, because getting eaten alive well and truly sucks. But if I’d known you were even in town I’d have kept on moving. I try not to spend time where I know there are hunters.” He looked up at each other. “I know I’m fair game.”  


She felt the blood drain from her face. “You…”  


“You’ve made your feelings fairly clear and you’re hardly the first one to catch up with me. You’re the first one to catch up with me since Dean and I split but yeah.” He gave that little not-a-smile again. She wondered what an actual smile would look like and cursed herself for even thinking of it. “Like I said, you’re hardly the first.”  


“So why have you been hunting?”  


“The hell else am I good for?” He shrugged. “Dean and I split about… six weeks ago? Maybe seven? I don’t know, they all kind of blend together. I’ve been hunting if I see something that needs to be taken care of. Otherwise I just keep moving.”  


“You look sick.”  


He huffed again. “Not your problem. I can still pull a trigger.”  


“What do you have?”  


“Nothing normal. Nothing human.” He spat out the word. “We were supposed to close the gates of Hell, but Dean stopped me.”  


“Why?”  


“Oh, who the Hell knows? He figured out that it was going to kill me – like he didn’t know that was how it was going to turn out, right? – and we had this big emotional… thing, and he begged me not to finish and blah blah blah, and it’s not like I could say no to Dean so I pulled back and it freaking killed me anyway or close enough.” He rubbed his face with his hands. “Another goddamn fuckup.” He reached into his bag and pulled out a book. Tracy couldn’t even begin to guess at the language. “Anyway, you don’t care about any of this crap. You should take your pain meds and get some sleep. It’s going to be a long drive back to Kansas.”  


She considered. She wasn’t sure that she should really be out of it with this guy around, but her last dose was really starting to get to her. She took the pills and pulled the covers up over her shoulders. “You okay over there?”  


“I’m fine.”  


He didn’t look fine. He looked tired, hunched over and even a little chilly. “How come you left?”  


“Go to sleep, Tracy. The sooner you go to sleep the closer I’ll be to getting out of your hair.”  


She didn’t want to obey, because she was actually curious and because it was the man who had destroyed her life, but her eyes did close whether she wanted them to or not. She’d heard some whispered stories that he had freaky demonic powers – was that one of them?  


She didn’t wake up until late the next morning, in agony from her knee and from the bites. Her self-appointed nurse rushed to help her with the pills, making sure there was no skin contact when he helped her into a sitting position. “I got you some doughnuts and a fruit cup,” he told her. “I wasn’t sure which you’d want.”  


“Thanks,” she muttered, letting him bring both items over to the bedside table. He waved an acknowledgement but focused on his laptop. “What are you up to?”  


“Research. Looks like some heavy-duty demonic activity over near Chicago. That’s definitely Abaddon’s style; she likes places with people and important things. And fashion,” he added as an afterthought. “The lady’s got style.”  


“Are you planning to go after her?”  


“I wouldn’t tell you if I were, Tracy.” He sipped from his coffee. “It might not be much of a life, but I’m not exactly keen to end it by bringing hunters into the line of fire.” He looked up at her briefly. “Besides, I’m not convinced that there would be much that I could do about her right now anyway. I’m not exactly in top physical form and even if I had the demon-killing knife, which I don’t, she’s immune to it.”  


“It’s nice that you’re so worried about bringing people into the line of fire now that the damage is done,” she pointed out.  


He looked back at the computer. “Yeah, well. Better late than never I guess.”  


“Why did you do it?”  


“Does it matter?”  


“What?”  


“Does it matter why I did it? Is knowing why going to bring your family back? Is it going to make you hate me any less? Is it going to make me hate myself any less? Is it going to give anyone back anything?” He closed his book.  


“My whole family died, Winchester. I think you owe me that much.”  


“All right. There were these sixty-six seals, right? Sixty-six to start the Apocalypse. Well, more like six thousand, but the very first demon – her name was Lilith, for the record – she only had to break sixty-six of them to get the party started. Dean had sold his soul to bring me back from the dead.”  


“Why would he do that?”  


“I know, right? I already knew I was a freak. Dad already knew I was a freak, told him to kill me, but no, he had to go and sell his soul and I couldn’t get him out of it. So an angel came and pulled him out on orders from Heaven while a friendly demon from the other side came along and started helping me.”  


“Wait – you took help from a demon?”  


“Well like calls to like, right? And she was really, really smooth. Even took an empty host – completely brain-dead patient, no soul or brain or anything to be bothered – just so my tender little conscience wouldn’t be troubled.” His face showed the only real emotion he’d displayed the entire time – a sneer of pure bitterness, all turned inward. “Anyway, both sides were saying basically the same thing. We had to stop the seals from breaking. Of course, do you think the angels were telling us what the seals were? No. They weren’t telling Dean much and they weren’t telling me anything. Cas was the only one that would even come close enough to shake my hand, because I was too tainted to touch.”  


“Well, you were working with a demon,” she pointed out reasonably.  


He snorted. “That wasn’t the problem. The fact that a demon decided to ‘share’ his blood with human infants twenty-four-ish years before was their problem. That made me an abomination and nothing that I could do or not do would make me anything else in their eyes.  


“And they weren’t exactly easy on Dean. They raised him from Hell and I grew up believing in angels, you know? Guardians, protectors, fluffy wings and halos, the whole thing. Then I met them and I saw how they lied to him, how they manipulated him. How they treated him like crap.  


“So both sides are saying that if we can kill Lilith – that first demon – we could stop the Apocalypse. I’m not making excuses. I just want to make it absolutely clear that both sides were feeding us the same line. Both Heaven and Hell were telling us that Lilith had to die. Heaven was saying that Dean was the one who had to do it. Ruby – our ‘friendly’ demon – was saying that I had to be the one to do it. I saw some of the things that the angels were making Dean do, Tracy, and it was horrible. They lied to him, and they risked his life. They put him in the hospital.  


“I… I mean, I’m tainted. I’m impure. I’ve always been, I think even before Azazel got to me. I think I had to be, you know? But what I did have, what I do have, is power. I had to do some a-awful things to get at that power, or at least to build it up quickly enough to be useful at the time. But when I saw what the angels were doing to Dean, and I thought about his future and what he’d already suffered and for me – me! – I wasn’t willing to let him take Lilith on. It’s not like the angels were giving him any kind of advantage. They didn’t give two shits about him. I knew that when I saw him in that hospital bed hooked up to a million tubes. I knew that when I saw him bloody and on the floor at the hands of the demon that had tortured him in Hell. Hell, I knew it when the angels were willing to wipe out an entire suburban town because of one damn witch.  


“They weren’t what I thought they were. They lied. They manipulated. And the demons might be evil. They might be made from hate and malice and spite and everything that is wrong with the world but they had been more honest with me than anyone else in my life. I was the one of the two of us who could take out Lilith. Not Dean.  


“And in building up the power quickly to take out Lilith I became addicted. To demon blood.” Tracy recoiled in disgust. He waved a hand. “Whatever. It did the job. Yeah. It was wrong. Yeah. It was disgusting. No. It didn’t taste all that great. Think of rotten eggs. It gave me what I needed to do what needed to be done. And what both Heaven and Hell were telling us needed to be done was killing Lilith in order to stop the Apocalypse. I didn’t expect to survive and I didn’t care. Dean… I’d changed a lot while Dean was in Hell, and so had he. He didn’t like what he found when he came back. I was still willing to die for him, even though I knew exactly where I was heading.  


“Well, Dean decided that the whole demon blood thing was kind of gross – which, you know, it was – and that I needed to detox and go cold turkey right away, which in hindsight was maybe not the best idea. A part-demon psychic with uncontrolled telekinesis going through hardcore detox with seizures is, uh, not a pretty sight and as it turns out, you know, um, leaving me alone in the panic room might not have been the best plan. Didn’t really make it easy to uh, choose the Dean version of the plan. But I guess he was just, you know, fed up with his monster brother and that’s okay. I’d get fed up too. But it was his good angel buddy Castiel who opened the door to the panic room when Dean wasn’t looking.  


“I’m not blaming Dean and I’m not blaming Castiel for what I did. I took off and Dean got hauled off to some angel green room. It turned out they never wanted Dean to kill Lilith. It was always going to be me. It was always going to be me because Heaven wanted Lucifer free as much as Hell did, Lilith was the final seal, I really was literally the only one who could kill her and the only way to do it was to drink enough demon blood that literally no hunter would ever see me as anything but fair game again. My eyes were entirely black. My body temperature was over a hundred fifty degrees.  


“I had honestly believed – truly – that I was stopping the Apocalypse. There aren’t words to describe my horror when that Cage opened up and that room started to fill with light.”  


Tracy’s mouth went dry. “Light?”  


“Lucifer was – is – an angel. Archangel, really. He was cast down into the Cage but he’s still an archangel down to each and every subatomic particle. Trust me, I’m in a position to know. Anyway, the whole point is that we were both really kind of led by our noses into that situation. Both Heaven and Hell wanted that final battle and they were going to get it, we were just the genetically engineered saps stuck with the job.”  


“So you didn’t do it for money or power or perks or a girl,” she challenged.  


“There was a girl. She was tertiary. There was power. It was secondary – an addiction, like I said. I just didn’t know. I don’t think I could have known. Not with both sides trying so damn hard to hide it, with only the resources available to me then. Now, of course, I know right away to distrust anything with wings but I only learned that because of the Apocalypse.” He gave a nasty little smirk.  


“Did you love her?”  


“What, the girl?” He turned away. “It doesn’t matter. Look. You got your answer.”  


“So how did you get out of it? I mean, how did Dean get you out of it?”  


“What do you mean? Out of what?”  


“Out of the Apocalypse. I mean, we’re all still here. Rumor has it Dean saved us all.”  


“Rumor has it… You know what? It doesn’t even matter. Ask him how he did it when you see him. I guess once my part was over I was in the hot box so I didn’t get to see how he finished it.” His lips twitched.  


“What was your part? Other than letting Lucifer out and getting the whole thing started, I mean?” The doughnuts were actually pretty good.  


“Putting him back in.”  


She snorted. “Everyone knows Dean did that.”  


He shrugged. “Okay.”  


She looked at him. He’d gone back to his book and his laptop. She didn’t want to feel sorry for him. She didn’t. Still, she couldn’t get the broken way his voice sounded when he’d told her about freeing Lucifer out of her head. “Why would you try to steal Dean’s credit for something like that?”  


He glanced back over at her. “I don’t actually care if you believe me, Tracy. You asked, I told. I don’t care if you know the truth or not. I don’t care if anyone does. I didn’t do it for praise. I did it to clean up my own goddamn mess and for the only time in my life it worked.”  


“So what, you just picked up an archangel and chucked him back into Hell?”  


He chuckled without humor. She wondered if he was capable of laughter or if humor was lost to him when the demon “shared” its blood, as he put it. . “No. See, Dean was Michael’s true vessel. I was Lucifer’s. I said ‘yes.’ He possessed me. I took control back, opened the Cage and jumped. Michael tried to stop it from another vessel so I dragged his ass in too.” He paused. “I’m not sure if that one was me or Luci, actually. Whatever. Luci had to go back, and Michael deserved at least as much if not more.”  


“You jumped into Lucifer’s Cage and sealed it behind you.” He nodded. “On purpose.” He nodded again. “How did you think you were going to get out of that one?”  


“I didn’t. I didn’t want to. I mean, if there was one place where no one could get hurt because of me it was the Cage, right? I mean, I knew it was going to suck. Forever. But I deserved it, so whatever.”  


She blinked. “Was it…”  


“It was worse than anything you can imagine. I was down there with two essentially omnipotent beings. The only thing they couldn’t do was escape. The only thing they hated more than each other was me, because this little powerless abomination – lower even than a real human – had managed to thwart their little plan. Regular angels lack creativity, and Michael was kind of lacking in imagination himself. Lucifer makes up for it though.”  


“How did you get out then?” she asked. “I mean, if you weren’t trying?”  


“Uh, Cas pulled part of me out. He got my body out. I had my mind and my memories and everything, but not my soul. I didn’t know it was him of course, he just kind of ditched me in the same cemetery where it happened. Which is fine,” he added quickly, and Tracy frowned and shifted her body in the bed. “I mean, it’s not like he pulled me out for sentimental reasons, you know? I don’t inspire that kind of thing in people.”  


“Your brother misses you,” she pointed out. His casual, calm tone was more disturbing than anything else. “He wants to see you, Sam.”  


“He’s afraid of how I’m going to screw up next,” Winchester sneered. “He’ll just sell me to another goddamn angel at the next possible opportunity.”  


“What?”  


“When I was unconscious, after the angels fell and everything, he helped an angel trick me into giving consent to being used as a vessel again. I didn’t even know it was an angel. Thought it was Dean. Then the feathery little parasite wiped my mind – over and over and over. Dean, too – he kept calling on the angel to shut me down and use its powers on hunts, or just to chat. Eventually I figured out what was going on, kicked the dirty thing out and left. Now here I am.”  


She frowned again. “So let me get this straight. You turned into a demon and turned yourself back.”  


“Uh, yeah.”  


“Got possessed by Lucifer, took control back while locking him in your body and jumped into the Cage.”  


“Yep.”  


“And forced a parasitic angel out of yourself with nothing but the force of your own mind.”  


“Yeah.”  


“Goddamn, Winchester. How have you not taken over the world yet or anything?” None of that should have been possible for anyone, much less someone whose own blood apparently put him on Hell’s side in the first place.  


He blinked. “Uh, I break everything I touch? Started the Apocalypse, remember?”  


She closed her eyes, forced them open again. “Yeah. Yeah, I remember. I remember and I still want to hate you for that. But… it sounds to me like you didn’t know. You couldn’t have known. You were being railroaded. It was going to happen and it was always going to be you.”  


“I still should’ve been smarter than that. There’s no excuse.”  


“Sam!” she snapped, and he brought his eyes up to meet hers for basically the first time since seeing her yesterday. “Stop it. You screwed up but you cleaned up after yourself. It sounds like you suffered terribly as a result, too. At least… at least my family died, you know? They were good people. I know they’re in Heaven. You’ve gotten a pretty bad hand but you’ve done some awesome things with it, from the sound of it. No one has ever just brought themselves back from going demonic before. Or since.”  


“I’m pretty unique that way,” he admitted wryly.  


“And you beat Lucifer. No one else could have done that.”  


“Still waiting on my fiddle of gold,” he commented.  


“Was that a joke?” she laughed.  


“I can’t claim the credit for that one – it was his. “ He chuckled weakly. It was a start.  


He turned back to his laptop, frowning at his book and checking something on the screen from time to time. After about an hour she asked him to bring her laptop over, which he obliged. She popped Garth a message and found herself pleasantly surprised when the self-appointed hunter dispatcher proved to be available for chat. “You’ve met Sam Winchester, right?” she asked him after letting him know that she was going to be out of commission for a while.  


“Yeah, yeah. Good guy. Smart if you can get him talking. How’s he doing? Last time I saw him he seemed a little down, but that was a while ago. At least a year. The guy needs more hugs.”  


Tracy tried to imagine her companion’s likely reaction to a hug. “I think that’d be a great way to get stabbed, Garth.”  


“Dean wouldn’t let him stab me. Dean likes me too much.”  


“He’s not with Dean anymore.”  


“Balls. What’s he after?”  


“Right now? Nothing. He’s looking after me until someone else gets here to help me out.” She made a face at the screen.  


“Tracy, listen to me. Sam Winchester is normally the nicest, sweetest guy on the planet. Is Dean alive and okay?”  


“Yeah. He’s on his way here. They had a big blowup. I can’t say that I blame Sam for taking off.”  


“Uh… okay. Is Sam hunting Dean?”  


“No. I think Dean’s looking for him maybe.”  


“Look. Sam is normally a giant, sweet and brilliant teddy bear. I know he’s got kind of a bad reputation but I’ve had the pleasure of spending some time in his company and none of it is true. He’s a saint, especially for putting up with what he’s put up with over the years. But without something to anchor him he gets… uh…. Let’s just say he gets very driven. Very, very driven.”  


She looked over at Sam. He was slumped back against the wall, twirling a pen around in his right hand with his long fingers. “Yeah, I can see that.”  


“I’m serious. He’ll get himself killed.”  


“I don’t think he much cares.” She glanced at her companion again. “I don’t think he’s in a great space, emotionally.”  


“Aw Hell, Tracy, Sam’s never been in a great place emotionally. People keep messing with his head. If they’d stop doing that I think he might come out okay. And, you know, give him hugs. Dean’ll set him right when he gets there, you’ll see.”  


“I don’t think he’s the one Sam needs to be seeing right now, Garth. Is there anyone else who Sam could maybe see? Anyone who actually likes the guy?”  


“Sam ain’t much of a people person, I’m afraid. The whole Apocalypse thing turned a lot of people off to him. Well, you know that.”  


“There has to be one person who cares.”  


“I’m afraid not. Don’t you hate him too?”  


“I wanted him to pay for what he did and I think he’s done that. I don’t want him to go and get himself killed because he’s too beat up to function, or because he’s decided that there’s no damn point to going on anymore.”  


“He’s too smart for that, Tracy.”  


“Really? Because he’s done it twice before.”  


“Tell Garth hi for me,” Sam told her without looking up from his work.  


“How did you – “  


“Psychic, Tracy. Remember?”  


“So you know everything I’m thinking?”  


“Not really. I get glimpses here and there. Not enough to be terribly useful. Enough to be obnoxious.” He gave a little smirk that was actually kind of sexy, or would have been if it was on anyone but Sam Winchester.  


She blushed and signed out of her chat with Garth.  


It was exactly twenty-one hours and thirty-nine minutes after Dean’s call when Sam abruptly stood up. “All right. Are you comfortable? Need help getting to the restroom or anything? You all set for food and such for a few minutes?” He unlocked the motel room door.  


“Uh, yeah. Why?”  


“Good luck with your recovery. I hope everything goes well.” He grabbed his bags and headed toward the bathroom. “Dean should be here in five.”  


“Wait – Sam! Don’t go! How am I supposed to get in touch with you?”  


He knit his brows together. “You won’t need to. You’ll have Dean.”  


“But what if I want to?”  


“You won’t. I promise.” He closed the bathroom door and he was gone.  


Dean and some other guy – six feet tall, dark hair with blue eyes – walked through the door of the motel room four minutes and forty-five seconds later. Almost five minutes in which Tracy got to question when exactly she got to be mad that Sam Winchester wasn’t sticking around instead of being disgusted by his very presence.  


The elder Winchester was upset to have missed him and actually took off looking for his sibling, leaving her alone with his socially awkward companion. He had no luck, though – Sam left no trace of himself behind. “Dean,” Socially Awkward Boy told him, “when Sam does not wish to be found he will not be found. And he can hardly be blamed for not wishing to be found.”  


“I know, Cas. I know. What was I supposed to do? He was dying. Again. And all he cared about was making sure that it was permanent this time. I couldn’t let it happen, Cas. I couldn’t.”  


“That’s probably why he wanted it to be permanent,” she told him. “I’ve never been possessed but he sure didn’t seem to think it was a great solution.”  


Dean snorted. “Sister, the only thing Sam hates more than angels is himself. The guy ain’t happy unless he sees his own grave.”  


“That doesn’t give you the right to give his body and soul away,” Cas retorted.  


Tracy reached out a hand. “I’m Tracy.”  


The stranger shook it after a moment’s consideration. “I’m Castiel. I’m a friend of Sam’s… although I suppose I wasn’t always.” A shadow passed over his face. Tracy started as she remembered where she’d heard the name before. “Are you also a friend of Sam’s?”  


“I guess I am. Although if you’d asked me that yesterday I’d have said something different.”  


The men took her back to Kansas because it was the only place they could think of. Of course, it was quite a place to be. They had a whole huge underground lair thing going on. The stairs inside were a bitch to navigate with crutches but they just made her stronger, right? As it turned out she wasn’t the only guest. There was a young guy, Asian and stubbly, who could barely bring himself to look at Dean. He helped Tracy to choose a room but kept her away from one in particular, insisting that “he” was going to come back to it someday. She filed that information away.  


Cas lived there too. He had a room of his own although he seemed to be uncomfortable in this place, like he didn’t quite feel welcome here.  


Then there was the demon in the dungeon. He’d apparently been the king of Hell until recently. He was snarky and smarmy and apparently strongly disliked Dean. When Tracy sneaked into the space in secret, he made a confession to her. While Sam had absolutely despised him, he’d actually quite admired “Moose.” The guy had taken down Lucifer with nothing but his own willpower and a piece of cheap plastic, after all. With all this talk about curing demons (had Sam actually tried to do that?) the biggest miracle of all had been Sam curing himself, and he’d done that without a ritual or holy water.  


Over the weeks that her knee required to rebuild itself Tracy formed a plan. She revealed it first to Kevin, because the prophet seemed the best able to help put it into action. The youth didn’t like leaving Dean out of it but ultimately he got why they had to. He was in. Then they brought Cas in. This time it was Tracy who was reluctant – it had been Cas who had let Sam out of “detox” to commit the act that had gotten her parents killed after all, and he confessed to having done worse to the man besides. He was filled with remorse now that he was human, though, and he was willing to do whatever he needed to if it would help Sam. The final member of the team was Crowley. Crowley would probably have joined either for the sake of stretching his legs or pissing Dean off. The fact that he got to do both while somehow helping Moose do… whatever it was that he was planning… was an added bonus. It seemed kind of strange to be trusting a demon at all (hadn’t that been what got Sam into trouble in the first place?), never mind the former King of Hell. Still, he didn’t seem to be feigning his revulsion toward what had been done to Sam. “When we possess we do it without consent,” he’d admitted freely. “We don’t pretend that you asked for it, that you allowed it. It’s an act of violence and we know it.”  


As soon as Tracy felt she was safe enough to leave the bunker and hunt they put their plan into action. Sam had told her what Abaddon’s preferences were – population centers with important things. Kevin and Cas worked to track demonic omens and they came up with a likely site. The Navy had a submarine base in Groton, Connecticut that looked like it fit perfectly with the knight’s plans. If Sam were planning to go after her in some way he would probably head there to challenge her.  


They didn’t have much time. Crowley was excused from attending on the grounds that a large part of what Abaddon was doing was an attempt to get him to show himself (or to convince the Winchesters to hand him over, whichever was easiest.) The rest of them piled into the Beetle and hit the highway. They trusted Crowley to keep their secret from Dean, if he were even to have been asked.  


Cas did not like the Beetle. He declared this to be the case repeatedly. Tracy wondered if shooting a former angel got one sent to Hell.  


No one had the first clue as to exactly what Sam would try. Details on what would take out a Knight of Hell were sketchy at best even in the extensive Men of Letters library. He’d made it even harder to follow his plans by carefully removing several volumes before making his escape, or at least that was what they’d assumed he’d done. There were books that had been in the catalogue that were no longer there, and Sam had catalogued them since they were in languages Kevin couldn’t understand. “The guy’s like a walking, talking dictionary,” Kevin enthused. “I just wish he hadn’t stolen half the library before he took off.”  


“He did not ‘steal’ the books,” Castiel corrected. “Dean told me that their grandfather entrusted the key to Sam. The books could be read as being more Sam’s than Dean’s when considered in that light.”  


The younger hunters were silent for a moment. “Why does Dean treat the place like it’s his then?” Kevin wanted to know.  


“For Dean, their possessions have always been held in common and as the elder brother he was the dominant of the pair. Sam has never felt he was allowed material possessions. It is a different mindset.”  


With three people driving straight through it didn’t take as long to get to Groton as it might have otherwise. Doubt began to creep in on Tracy almost right away. After all there was so very much that could have gone wrong. It was entirely possible that Abaddon herself wouldn’t be in Groton. It was possible that she would catch them before they caught up to Sam, and that was probably the absolute last thing that Sam would want. It was possible that Sam wasn’t actually going after Abaddon at all, that he’d thrown a red herring across her trail to keep her and other hunters away. (She actually expressed that one out loud during planning sessions and Cas admitted it was well within the realm of possibilities. Sam was very capable of deception when he needed to accomplish something.)  


It was possible that Sam had already died, starving himself or overworking himself or freezing to death out on the road or eaten by bears or something. That chilled her, almost as much as the thought that the possibility of his death through self-neglect disturbed her.  


Groton itself didn’t look exceptionally demonic. That didn’t mean that it wasn’t. Any of the people they saw busying themselves near the base could have been possessed. There was no way to know. Fortunately Kevin had gotten them fake IDs that passed muster and got them onto the base as civilian contractors, but once on site they were kind of at a loss.  


They wandered around until what they were looking for found them. Well, sort of. “This sounds like the beginning of a really bad joke,” a familiar voice smirked from behind them. The trio spun around to find Abaddon standing there, flanked by two uniformed demons. “A rookie hunter, a fallen angel and a prophet walk into a naval base. Guess what the punch line is.”  


“How about if we change up the joke a little bit?” Sam stepped out of the shadows.  


Tracy turned to look at him. “How are you even here?”  


“My mom and my dad had sex, and then Azazel got involved.” He shrugged.  


She refused to laugh at his joke, even if Kevin snickered a bit. “We’ve been looking everywhere for you! Do you have any idea how worried we’ve been?”  


“Why?” He turned to Abaddon. “Look, they’re not what you really want. They’re just humans. You’ve been trying to get your hands on a Winchester for months, now you’ve got one offering himself up on a silver platter.”  


She sneered. “You’re half a Winchester at best.” She strode forward. “Look at you. Can’t even die right, can you?”  


He didn’t flinch as the demon approached. “It’s a problem, I’ll give you that,” he said with the tiniest of smiles. “I’m sure you’d like to do something about that.”  


“You look like you’re more than halfway to doing it yourself.” She circled him, looking him over. “Then again, the last time we spent any time together you looked worse and you still managed to burn me.”  


“After you threw me through a window, if you’ll recall.”  


“I don’t want you for a vessel,” she said.  


“Good. I wasn’t offering. I’m a bit useless for that sort of thing anymore anyway. I’ve taken steps,” he added darkly. “But ask any demon. We’ve been a pain in Hell’s ass for a while. I’m sure getting rid of one of us would make your life easier. It would probably make getting the one you do want easier, too. He does stupid shit when he thinks he can bring me back from the dead.”  


“Sam! No!” Cas barked, stepping forward. Sam raised a hand and the former angel couldn’t move. “I can’t let you give Dean up like that.”  


“He earned this by what he did to me,” Sam growled. “If you don’t like it then close your eyes.”  


“Sam, I understand that you’re angry –“  


“I said close your goddamn eyes!” the giant snarled. He turned back to Abaddon. “Look closer, Abaddon. You should be able to see what I am – what I was supposed to be, anyway.” He met her eyes squarely.  


Her eyes went black as she searched his. “A mostly-human Knight of Hell,” she marveled, grabbing his chin. “I have no idea who thought that was a good idea. Why wouldn’t you use it? Embrace it? You could have been so much more than some pathetic drifter, begging for crumbs of affection from your pretty brother’s table.”  


“Coulda, woulda, shoulda.” He shrugged. Tracy shuddered. How could he be so calm with that… thing….holding onto him like that? “It’s a little late for regrets, isn’t it? Look – you’ve got me, just let them go and you can do whatever you want.”  


“Oh, no. I won’t harm them, but I’m not letting them go. They’re going to bring that lovely brother of yours here, and he’s going to see your broken and lifeless body on the ground. That’s when the fun will start.” One of her hands fell to her side, where she pulled a knife from her belt.  


At the same time Sam’s hand, which had been hanging limp and empty by his side, came up toward her sternum. Tracey had no idea where he’d been hiding the weird-looking blade he suddenly held there – it was long for a knife, short for a sword and strangely triangular. It looked like the shiniest silver and he brought it up into her chest with as much force as she stabbed him in the side with her own knife.  


A bright light had already started to radiate from Sam, as bright as the sun. Now it threatened to explode. “Holy shit,” Castiel swore, turning away and pushing Kevin and Tracy to the ground. “Shut your eyes! Now!” The ensuing blast of light carried warmth and something else with it. Tracy felt a wave of emotion wash over her along with the gentle warmth and light – like a blast wave of love and compassion.  


After about thirty seconds all of the effects died away. Tracy decided to risk getting up. Abaddon’s vessel – beautiful and elegant even in death – lay beneath Sam’s inert form. The two stunt demons had not managed to die pretty. The eyes had been melted in their sockets; the bodies smoked with radiation burns. The three humans ignored the corpses for now in favor of checking on Sam. “Oh God,” Kevin whispered at the giant’s pallor. “I don’t think he’s breathing.”  


“He’s bleeding, and badly,” Tracy observed. She stripped off one of her shirts and stuck it into the wound to try to staunch the bleeding. “Cas, give me something to tie this in place. We need to get him to a hospital.”  


“I… I don’t know if a hospital could help him now,” the former angel murmured, obeying by passing over his hoodie. “I… he shouldn’t exist. That shouldn’t happen. It couldn’t have happened.”  


“It did happen. He’s going to die if we don’t get him to stop bleeding and start breathing, and it would be a good idea to get him the hell off this base. The whole point of us showing up was for him to not die, remember?” Tracy resisted the urge to smack both men. “Come on. Work now, spazz later. Maybe a motel?”  


“Yeah. Yeah, a motel.” Her words shocked Kevin into action. He grabbed Sam’s legs. “Cas, you get his head and shoulders.”  


Between the three of them they got Sam breathing again if badly. They managed to get him stuffed awkwardly into the back of the Beetle beside Kevin, who admitted that he felt a little like a marshmallow in an elephant cage. Tracy drove to a nearby motel and Cas signed them into adjoining rooms. The best thing about him being out cold was the fact that he was too unconscious to do much about the whole getting stripped half naked and stitched thing. Once the stitches were in all they could do was wait and hope nothing important had been perforated.  


Dean called. He shouted. He whined. He threatened. He cajoled. He cried. Finally Cas told him where they were and even permitted him to approach with the understanding that if anyone there even suspected that he was trying anything “untoward” with regards to his brother everyone present would make his time in Hell look like a garden. Even Kevin was armed, Cas pointed out, and would “emulate the admirable actions of the mighty Agent Coulson and taze you into the carpet.”  


Sam was still out when Dean got there, and for several days beyond that. Garth called to get the lowdown. “Sam Winchester took out Abaddon. Alone,” she pointed out. “I saw it happen. I want you to make sure people know that.”  


He gave a long, low whistle. “How’d he manage that?”  


“When he wakes up I’ll ask him. “  


The hunters took turns sitting with the shell of Sam, so it was just dumb luck that Tracy was the one sitting with him when his eyes flew open. She was at his side in a moment. “How you feeling?” she asked him.  


He frowned. “Shitty.” His voice was somewhere between a whisper and a rasp.  


“You’re probably thirsty. Let me help you sit up a bit.”  


He scowled but proved to be unable to heft himself up. “Why?” he asked before she helped him lift a glass of water to his lips. She didn’t need to tell him to take small sips. He’d been through this kind of thing before.  


“We’ve been taking turns sitting with you. It was just my turn.”  


He shook his head. “No. Why were you three there?”  


She sighed. “Can I bring the others in? They deserve to be part of this.” He rolled his eyes, looking tired again already. She smoothed some of the hair out of his face before going to fetch the men and he actually flinched. Christ, this guy was so screwed up.  


Dean almost ran her over in his rush to see Sam. His brother’s reaction was less enthusiastic. The invalid recoiled, hands scrambling for any kind of weapon under the scratchy motel sheets. “He’s not going to hurt you,” Cas assured him. “This room is warded against angels.”  


“So am I.” He gave a tense grin and indicated a tattoo on the underside of his ribcage, on the opposite side from where he’d gotten stabbed. “Nothing’s getting in.”  


“I don’t think anything could get in again,” the former angel pointed out. “Would you be willing to explain how you did what you did? I… was flummoxed.”  


He sighed. “When you put the parasite in me,” he said with a deep glare at Dean, “it wasn’t healing me. Not entirely. It was changing me. There was some healing, sure, but it was more about making changes. The, uh, Trials generated a lot of energy. Radiation energy, which is all Grace really is. And once I figured out that thing –“ there was the spitting hatred again – “was in me and erasing my memory, I told it to get out. It laughed at me.” He gave an exhausted, dark little smirk. “I… well, Alistair was able to pull an angel out of its vessel, right? And I’m stronger than he was, when I’m fueled right.”  


“You didn’t go back on…” Dean’s face twisted in disgust.  


“Dean, shut up,” Tracy snapped. “You forced this on him. Whatever he did to get it out is on you, not him.”  


Sam looked at her a little quizzically. “Thanks, Tracy.” He sounded confused. “But no. Like I said, the Trials generated plenty of extra energy, and Ezekiel had its own grace. His own grace? I don’t now. I didn’t actually meet – I mean, I never knew Ezekiel as anything but a parasite.”  


“He forced himself on you, wiped your mind repeatedly and you’re worrying about misgendering him?” Kevin blinked. “Get on with the story and don’t worry about hurting his feelings.”  


“Right. So, uh, I didn’t want it to be able to hurt anyone else so I, uh, stole some of its grace.” He looked at the ground.  


Dean had looked properly ashamed of himself after Tracy’s outburst. Now he just looked scared. “You stole his grace?”  


“Just most of it. I don’t know what its final game plan was – take over my body entirely, maybe. Kind of like how Castiel wasn’t just possessing Jimmy Novak after the Apocalypse, but was vessel and angel in one, just a lot less voluntary. It just had to make the changes itself rather than letting God do it. So it had changed my body to be able to handle grace, I just needed to be figure out how to use it. I couldn’t use it to heal, probably because I’m too demonic.”  


“That’s nothing to do with it, Sam,” Cas interrupted. “Angels heal slowly when their grace is injured. I’m still not entirely sure how you stole Ezekiel’s grace from inside the vessel. That’s something an angel has never been able to do, but we cannot possess each other either.”  


He shrugged. “Not an actual angel. So, anyway. I bummed around for a while, hunted if something was around and there weren’t any other hunters around, you know. Tried to figure out what all I could do. Got some new ink. Figured if I was going to go out might as well do something good with it. Decided to go after Abaddon. Now why were you three there?”  


“What did she mean by calling you a knight of Hell?” Kevin wanted to know?  


“My… demonic abilities – separate from my psychic abilities – are the same as a Knight of Hell. That was another little tidbit we learned recently. I think that was part of Azazel’s plan.” He shrugged. “I figured combining the two would work. Can you please get with the explanations? I almost didn’t get to take her out because I was worried about you.”  


Tracy laughed. She couldn’t help it. “We were hoping to stop you before you did something stupid and got yourself killed,” she told him. “You really think anyone with eyes couldn’t tell that was a self-harm thing as much as a hunting thing?”  


“There’s usually a pretty fine line,” Dean commented wryly. “Especially with him.”  


“No more,” Cas said directly. He came to sit on the side of Sam’s bed. “Sam, you have been raised to hold your own life as worthless since you were an infant. Your brother was as well, but he has improved while we have been acquainted. You have gotten worse. I have contributed to this and I cannot describe my guilt, but I want you to know that I am not going to allow it to continue.  


“You need to understand that you are valued, Sam. Tracy and Kevin and I tracked you to Groton because we care about you. Crowley helped, and he helped because he cares for you. Garth has been helping because he cares for you and thinks you need more hugs.” Sam shuddered. Dean snickered. “You are valuable as a person, as a man. We came here, Sam, because we were hoping to prevent your death, but if we couldn’t do that we wanted to at least let you go in the knowledge that you would leave something behind you.”  


Tracy wouldn’t have believed that the ex-angel with his stilted language and inability to grasp things like song lyrics and personal space would have been capable of inspiring an emotional response but her eyes blurred with tears all the same. “The world’s been pretty shitty to you, Sammy,” Dean continued, and he sounded pretty choked up. “I’ve been pretty shitty to you lately too. But damn it, Sammy, the world is better off with you in it. I want – we all want – to help you to feel better about being in the world. Not because you’re weak, but because you freaking deserve it, man.”  


The hazel eyes lowered, refusing to meet anyone directly. “Look,” he whispered, “I’m even more of a freak than I was before. It’s just a matter of time before I screw something else up.”  


“Sam, shut up,” Tracy told him, sitting on the other side of the bed and taking his hand. He flinched violently, but didn’t withdraw. “Everyone makes mistakes. You own yours. Stop owning everyone else’s too. You’ve done a lot of good. You’ll do plenty more good if you want to. When you’re ready. You don’t have to do it all and you sure as hell don’t have to do it alone.” He gave her hand a gentle squeeze.


End file.
